Just about every office I’ve ever worked in had a provision for coffee in the office. Either there was a big coffee urn type pot (like you see at wedding receptions) or a Mister Coffee type (grounds in paper filter, pour water in the top, coffee sits in pot on burner) in a break room somewhere. Lots of time on TV I see people bringing coffee into the office in paper cups or else using a vending machine.
So, this poll is for people who work in an office of some kind, either full or part-time or (like me) on a consulting basis.
I’m curious about British offices and tea, but don’t know how to frame the questions, so Brits feel free to comment or else I’d be interested in a thread on UK beverage options in the office. (Yeah, I need to GAL one of these days.)
ETA: I probably didn’t cover all the options, and I forgot to ask about cost. Elaborate in comments, please. Thank you.
We have a Flavia machine, which I rarely use because the department doesn’t provide milk, just coffee and sugar, and I rarely remember to bring in milk. So I usually buy lattes in the student center which is the next building over.
There’s the cafeteria, and there’s also a coffee stand in another building that’s an extension of the cafeteria. We have a single-cup coffee maker in the office, but you have to use your own coffee.
The office doesn’t provide any coffee. But we have a coffee co-op that has a machine in the break room. There’s no monetary contribution; if you want to have the right to drink the coffee, you bring in 2-3 lbs of good quality coffee once every few months on a rotation (We favor Trader Joes, Costco & Whole Foods store brands).
I once witnessed a high level manager, someone in charge of budgeting for things like office supplies and thus perfectly aware that the office doesn’t pay for the coffee – stroll right in and help himself. Its an honor system but he’s the only one I have ever seen violate it. Jackass.
We don’t do office coffe, but we’re a field service tech service provider, so being in the office enough to want to have a coffee pot is a sign that you aren’t doing your job.
I marked the first one, but it’s not a pot or urn, it’s one of those machines with little single serving doodads. I don’t drink coffee, so I don’t care myself. But I used to have my own office and had to deal with the employees demands for coffee and their spats about it. I paid for the coffee maker, and the coffee things (grounds in a kind of donut shaped filter thing back then), but then when I found they were using two of those coffee/filter packs at a time and often left a nearly full pot on the machine at the end of the day I made the coffee drinkers pitch in to cover the costs. Coffee drinkers are just weird and crazy about the stuff.
In my office there are at least FOUR options for coffee -
The free stuff
The large, old school vending machine ($0.75?)
The small, fancy vending machine, which has a clear hopper at the top you can see coffee beans through (so I presume it grinds them fresh) and which takes credit cards ($1.50-$2.00?)
The coffee sold for an hour or so in the morning by a cafeteria employee along with a selection of breakfast items brought to our building’s break room for convenience’s sake, the cafeteria itself is in another building across campus - I think it’s Starbucks? ($1.00-$1.50?)
Currently, there are a couple of coffee pots in the break room. Most of my previous jobs were the same, except when I worked in retail, when there was no coffee. In general, the coffee was provided by the employer without additional charge.
Other.
My primary job is in a bar/restaurant and beverages of all sorts are freely available for the staff. There’s generally a pot of coffee going until the kitchen closes and after that we can have soda or juice from the fountain gun or beer/wine/liquor towards the end of our shifts.
That and a free meal per shift are just about the only perks.
The offices I worked in people brought in their own coffee machines and coffee. It would be a group purchase. (I’m not a coffee drinker, so I wasn’t directly involved.)
Most places had access to a coffee vending machine but the consensus was the vending machine coffee was inferior and people wouldn’t buy it if other options were available.
The people in my office aren’t really coffee drinkers. There is an old coffee maker available that hasn’t been cleaned in 4 years and a 3-year old tub of Folgers for visitors. I have my own 5-cup Mr. Coffee for personal use so I don’t have to drink the dreck provided for the unsuspecting masses.
At my last job, the coffee situation was a good indicator of the company’s overall attitude toward employees. When I was first hired, the breakroom was stocked with Starbucks coffee, teas, hot chocolate, and soft drinks.
A couple of years (and corporate reorganizations) later, they stopped stocking everything but coffee and replaced the Starbucks with a shitty no-name industrial brand that tasted like the muddy sludge you get at rural truck stop gas stations.
Just before I was laid off, they removed the coffeemakers altogether and replaced them with a Keurig-type brewer and a vending machine selling single-cup servings for a dollar each.
We have a real mish-mash. In the business office, there is a communal coffee maker, and I’m pretty sure the coffee-drinkers in that office take turns bringing in coffee, but anyone is welcome to have a cup. A couple of offices have a pot with a “quarter a cup” sign.
I’m a one-person office, so I have a Keurig and bring my own K-cups.
There’s no coffee machine on our floor, as far as I know. But there’s a Tim Hortons and a Starbucks and a Second Cup (? I think) downstairs in the food court area.
Each floor in our office has a coffee machine and free coffee. While it’s not terrible I prefer to make my own (Sumatra Mandheling) with an electric kettle and a French Press. I once work in an office with an on-site barista who would make you an espresso for $1, subsidized by the company. Then again, it is the coffee state (Washington) and I’ve always worked in the computer industry.
I’m a teacher. Do you know what happens to teachers if you take their coffee away? :eek:
Coffee machine in the faculty room, free of charge. Fancier coffees from a machine in the cafeteria for 10 kroner a cup. I don’t like coffee, even if I am a teacher. But we have teabags available for free, too, and an electric kettle.
There’s at least one break room on every floor of our building with multiple coffee pots, and the cafeteria sells coffee in the mornings. You can also arrange for the cafeteria to provide one or more urns of coffee at conference rooms for extended meetings…which seems kind of pointless to me, since the conference rooms are mostly clustered around the break rooms.
It’s doesn’t matter much to me, because I hate coffee. I think the place would smell better without it, but there would no doubt be riots. To their credit, they’ve recently started providing small supplies of decent tea bags in the break rooms, but I still prefer to bring my own blends.
That’s a US office. The company office I visited in Sweden had more extensive arrangements, and provided hot chocolate in addition to coffee and tea.